Understory

Waiting for the forecast

Of severe thunderstorms

To finally come true,

What about sacred caves?

A species that liked them

Since it was another

Earlier species, if

Species even measures

Anything, you’d expect

Would explore them, but still,

Humans more than love them.

Something about caving

Lures imagination,

Is imagination’s

Mother of metaphor.

Here you are at the mouth

Of one, feeling sheltered,

Watching the storm roll in,

But you’re considering

How caves seemed entrances

To dreamlike underworlds,

Counterparts to bright air,

Middle earth, as if they

Held understory worlds,

Although lightless danger

Was all they really held.

The caves became stories

Of dreams and afterlives

And hells, chthonic dragons,

And deities of death,

So then what? In Belize,

The Maya seem to have

Re-enacted stories

Made up to explain caves

In caves to reinstate

What was slipping away—

Real caves, myths about caves,

Real enactments of myths

In the caves, with real deaths.

Why would you think this while

Some thunder grumbles, while

The lightning holds its breath?

Impoverished Moral Thinking

City people, like city
Pigeons, approach novelty
More easily. Selection

Favors the brave in a crowd.
Out in emptier country,
The fearful and reclusive

Appear to be more favored.
Humans, of course, are famous
Among humans for sharing

Notes, so, in your species’ case,
Country mice are well aware
Of city mice novelties,

And express disapproval
In their hinterland mischiefs.
But no one knows what to make

Of the rare and morally
Impoverished reasoning
That brings the occasional

City native out to live
Among the country brethren.
Is this novelty-seeking

Or creeping nativism?
For sure, it’s escapism,
But why escape belonging?

Yolp

Doesn’t it seem a bit strange,
That you treat life like a race
For happiness and wisdom,

When the hunger to achieve
Wisdom involves the knowledge
Death carries off everything?

You want wise when you know you
Will have to lose wisdom, too,
When wisdom’s mostly dealing

With facing your suffering
With more cliches about loss.
You can’t take it with you. Nope.

Breviarium Pro Vita Sua

The ideal poetry
Collection, to our mind,
Would serve breviary—

Compact, physical thing,
Ergonomic, well fit
To your hand or pocket,

A summary of life
In all necessary
Points and supplications,

Something you could carry
And open any time
To ask any question,

To slay any doldrums,
Read, and be contented.

The Importance of Your Purported Import

Meaning is a carrying,
A bringing in, carrying
Forth, a two-way trafficking

Of significance, data,
Information, not static
Information of itself.

Meaning comes from attention,
Acts on its own intentions,
Isn’t sheer information.

If information is genes,
Meaning’s metabolism.
When information is bits

Of code, meaning’s the reader
Making a role for the code.
Meaning is want and action,

And if a star, a black hole,
A galaxy reels with storms
Of information, meaning

In all that is up to you.
Information can’t be lost,
But meaning’s made and can be.

A Perfect Monster

What produces its own energy
Cannot be unplugged. What has no pulse
Will never suffer a broken heart.

What burns from the inside but is not
Alive, feels no hunger, sheds no waste,
Cannot be needy, starved, or debased.

You might want to shift your metaphors
Toward something less fragile, benign,
A brightness more heedless, enduring.

This is what it means to be a star—
Not a charmed center of attention,
Vulnerable in multiple ways,

But a monster of local orbits,
The furnace burning of its own weight.

Late Night in the Rabbit Hole with Marche

The ones I liked, I kept. The ones

I didn’t, I threw out. I took

The passages algorithms

Had provided and input them

To the stochastic writing tool,

Which then generated texts on

The basis of the prompts other

Algorithms had generated.

I’m in complete opposition

To the overarching value

That defines contemporary

Art: Identity. That is why

I have published this in my name,

Copyrighted, as my musings,

And I, the flesh and blood author

Of this play with algorithms,

Intend to sue your sorry ass

If you plagiarize my story.